Thursday, September 23, 2010

Michiko Kakutani, Please Report To The Principle's Office.

In Pulitzer Prize-winning book critic Michiko Kakutani's review today of "Obama's Wars," the latest Bob Woodward Washington bestseller, she inserts an error familiar to any grade-school student still learning the fine art of spelling.

This being the pared-down NYT, the error managed to make its way through the editorial process and into the print edition this morning -- reminding readers of the paper's declining resources in copy-editing a newspaper that once prided itself of getting everything right.

In a news quiz on grammar published in November of 2008, this is what now-standards editor Philip B. Corbett had to say about the confusion between the words "principle" and "principal:

"Aaarrgh."

Here's a screen grab of the offending passage.

In case you're wondering, here's the rule -- as provided by the NYT-owned website, About.com:

As a noun,principal commonly means "administrator" or "sum of money." As an adjective, principal means "most important." The noun principle means "basic truth" or "rule."

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